


No Place Like Home

by glittercracker



Series: No Place Like Home [1]
Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Eventual Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittercracker/pseuds/glittercracker
Summary: Nezumi finds himself in dire straits, very far from home. He's going to need a guardian angel for this one...





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akumeoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/gifts).



> From a list of 50 OTP prompts, all of which I mean to write at some point, but not in order!  
> This one: #11 - Bloody and bruised in a strange alleyway, so far from home  
> Chosen by the lovely Akumeoi  
> She beta-ed too! Eternal gratitude! <3

1

Nezumi had never felt so far from home, which was an irony almost absurd enough to make him laugh, even given the fact that he could barely breathe for the pain in his right-hand ribs. It was years since he’d had anything resembling a home. The home of his childhood was little more in his memory than the ash it had been reduced to; he couldn’t remember his mother’s face anymore, couldn’t even remember the name by which she had called him. And the only other place that had ever come close – a little basement room full of books and broken furniture – hadn’t really been a place at all. It had been the bright, brief presence that had shared it with him. One he had been far too young to understand the value of until it was long gone.

_Shit,_ he thought. _This isn’t the time or the place to think about that…to think about him._

Or then again, maybe it was. Maybe here, wedged against a cold brick wall in an empty alleyway in the deserted and alien remnants of a place he’d once known well, was exactly the place to dredge up the past. Maybe now, bruised and bleeding and divested of all his possessions from a fight that he never should have gotten into at all, was exactly the time to think about the deeper pain he’d carried, hoarded until it calcified within him, for so many years. 

After all, it was why he was in this place, at this moment, however he might have lied to himself along the way. It was almost seven years since he’d kissed Shion and walked away from him and the ruins of the city they’d brought down together, into the bright chill of an early springtime afternoon. The specter of that kiss had lingered on his lips for a long time; on his tongue where it had flicked Shion’s far too briefly. A wind full of bruised cherry blossoms and not yet quite divested of winter had pushed against him, blasting him in the face with an anger that ought to have been Shion’s. Yet that had been the only reproach leveled at him as he turned his back on a broken city and a broken heart. He hadn’t even allowed his own to reach him.

Like an echo of those long-ago blossoms, fat white snowflakes began to fall around him, along with half-frozen raindrops. _Fucking fantastic,_ he thought, looking up at the roiling sky, promising a storm. He would have to find some kind of shelter for the night, and with all of his money and belongings gone, that wasn’t going to be easy. He’d planned on a hotel – he’d made enough money before he set out on this trip to spring for some along the way – but clearly that was out of the question now. And while he certainly wasn’t a stranger to sleeping rough, that was generally something he planned on in advance, not settled for when he was battered and exhausted to his bones. 

He had been tired even before the fight. In fact, that was probably why he’d been caught off-guard. But now he was injured, too, and he suspected it wasn’t entirely superficial. He’d taken a hard kick in the ribs and the knee on the same side, and one of the guys who’d attacked him had had a knife. There was a nasty slash across his upper arm, and other, smaller cuts he hadn’t bothered to count. And now he had to find shelter close enough to make it to in his current state, and warm enough that he’d survive the elements for a few hours, even poorly-clothed and bleeding. There was only one place he could think of that met those criteria.

Sliding to his feet, Nezumi felt a couple of ribs crackle and his right knee pop painfully. Breathing in was excruciating, and he could feel blood from the knife cut trickling down inside his sleeve. Still, he made himself move down the alleyway, toward what he thought were the remains of a familiar street. He turned onto it, moving away from the bright lights of No. 6, because that was how he had once navigated. There were no lights on these streets, now, but there was enough reflected light in the low storm clouds for him to make his way, limping, past half-buried landmarks.

The sleet slashed sideways in front of him and made everything indistinct. At least, he told himself that it was only that, not wanting to think too hard about the fuzziness in the periphery of his vision. He clutched his jacket around him carefully—newer than the one he’d had the last time he was here, if not exactly warmer—and pulled his old superfiber cloth over his head. The muggers had spared that, at least: probably because it was too old and worn to look like anything of value. They were more than likely right, but he’d never been able to make himself replace it.

And then, there it was: a little piece of the landscape still familiar, almost unchanged from so long ago. There were the ruins of whatever had once existed above his basement room: a broken stone wall, and a stairway that led upward to nowhere. There was also the stairway that led down to the stone arch, and through that, the door into his old room. 

Swaying slightly, he grasped the corner of a crumbling wall, trying to breathe as little as possible. When he thought that he was steady enough to handle the stairs, he started down, one hand on the wall to the right. He had to stop again at the bottom and brace himself while his vision cleared. When it had, he saw that the door had hardly changed. A little more rust on the handle, maybe; a few streaks of faded graffiti. But after seven years, that was the least that was to be expected. He closed a shaking hand around the doorknob, turned it and…nothing. 

It wasn’t rusted shut. It turned perfectly well, maybe even better than it had in the days when he’d used it regularly. But it remained resolutely closed. And then he saw it, through eyes beginning to blur once again: a lock, almost rusted enough since whenever it had been installed to blend in with the rest of the door. But it was a modern lock, requiring a modern key, and there was clearly no way that he was going to get past it.

With that realization, all of the rest became too much. The pain in his ribs and his knee and his arm and _everywhere._ The cold, the loss of his money and his dignity, the very fact that he had crept back to No. 6 in the dark, never expecting to speak to the man who was the sole reason he’d bothered to return. All he’d wanted was a night and a day here: long enough to see that Shion was alive and well. That he had somebody else…that he had _anything_ else. That Nezumi hadn’t broken him by leaving him on that long-ago, lonely hillside. Most of all, that he would prove to himself that Shion was lost to him forever, and the sweet taste of him, still on his tongue after all this time would somehow, for the love of god, leave him in peace.

He slid down against the side of the stone archway, dropping his head onto his bent knees. He felt the snow piling on his head and shoulders and feet. The superfiber, old as it was, wasn’t enough to keep him warm now. He began to shiver, and with that, to wonder if this was where everything ended for him: in this place that was as close as he could get to the only thing that had ever truly meant anything to him. He knew that if he fell asleep here, he very likely wouldn’t wake up; he also knew that he didn’t have the strength to help himself anymore.

He didn’t know how long he had been drifting in that haze of pain and cold and despair when he heard footsteps. _Run!_ his gut told him, even as his mind and body knew that he couldn’t. He felt too cold now even to flex his limbs, wound haphazardly around each other to keep in what little body heat he had left. The most he could do was tilt his head up, to see if his attackers had come back to finish the job, or if this was some brand new horror. 

When he did, he really did begin to wonder if he was dying. Whatever was at the top of the steps wasn’t so much a figure as a blaze of light, tall and indistinct, with an odd kind of halo, like the fine, glowing filaments in a light bulb.

“Are you all right?” the figure spoke from the top of the stairs, and Nezumi froze, because the voice was both familiar and foreign, full of the plangent tone of memory and yet somehow, not quite aligned with it. It was like looking through cracked glass at something he ought to know well, but was instead skewed out of all proportion. He couldn’t make himself answer.

The figure spoke again. “You can’t stay here. There’s nowhere safe to wait out the storm. All of the remaining buildings here are locked, and there are gangs out looking for stragglers. If you need a place to sleep, I’ll take you to a shelter.” The light that had been illuminating the figure now turned on Nezumi, bright as a stage spotlight in his face. He squinted into it, cursing himself as he did so: when had he ever squinted into a spotlight in his life? But the brightness was making the gray fuzz in the corners of his vision worse, and he couldn’t help it. 

And then the light faltered. “Oh my god,” that voice came again, this time low and nothing like self-assured, and all the more familiar for it. The light jerked and stuttered as the man at the top of the steps descended them, with a pace almost as faltering as Nezumi’s own had been. “You…you can’t…” The light shone in his face again, but this time less directly, and he managed to open his eyes. His head felt too heavy though, falling back against the stone behind him as a hand reached out, pushed back the superfiber cloth to look at him. 

Nezumi reached for the knife in his boot, but his fingers couldn’t feel anything, and he quickly gave up scrambling. Bleary eyes took in a face that looked entirely otherworldly. He could easily have believed that it belonged to an angel, with the white skin and the purple eyes, almost black in the shadows; the white hair, brighter even than he remembered. It was also longer now, pulled back into a low ponytail that fell in wisps over his shoulder. But it had, by all appearances, the same spun-sugar texture he could still remember on his fingertips after so many years. 

“Nezumi.” Shion spoke the name carefully, his voice low. His tone wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even hurt. It was more disbelieving, as if Nezumi might evaporate at the sound of it…which Nezumi could entirely relate to. 

“Shion?” he faltered.

Shion paused, ducking his head for a moment before he looked back up at Nezumi through the spiraling sleet. “What are you doing here? What _happened_ to you?” All at once, the look on Shion’s face changed from one of stupefied wonder to another that Nezumi recognized all too well. “Oh, shit; you’re hurt. Can you stand?”

“Since when do you speak in vulgarities, Shion?” Nezumi asked, but even he could tell that he was slurring. “And…I don’t really know.”

“Okay, come on.” Shion put the flashlight between his teeth, and then scooped an arm under Nezumi’s. Nezumi yelped in pain, and Shion quickly let go again, taking the light from between his teeth and handing it to Nezumi. “Broken ribs, right side?”

Nezumi nodded, clutching the light, although he had no idea what to aim it at. Then he heard the jingle of keys. _The door. The lock, idiot!_ Feebly, he pointed the beam of light at the lock he’d found earlier, as Shion sorted through a cluster of keys for one that fit it. He turned it, and then opened the door that Nezumi couldn’t, earlier. Surprisingly, a waft of warm air emerged from within.

“Where else are you injured?” Shion asked, turning back to him.

“Left arm, right knee,” Nezumi gritted out, shutting his eyes again. 

He thought he heard a sigh. But when Shion spoke again, his voice was firm and authoritative. “Listen to me, Nezumi. You are likely hypothermic, suffering from blood loss, with possible internal injuries I can’t remotely begin to diagnose from here. Taking these things one at a time, we need to deal with – ”

“Shion,” Nezumi interrupted. “Just get me inside before I freeze to death.”

Shion shook his head, but came around to Nezumi’s left side and gingerly lifted that arm over his shoulder. Shakily, Nezumi stood, and let Shion lead him inside. With a tremble of vertigo, he realized that Shion had not only grown taller, but also filled out during the time he’d been away, his upper body bulkier and harder than Nezumi remembered. 

Then Shion flicked a switch, and Nezumi thought that he had truly lost his mind. This was his old room, but it wasn’t. Electric light scoured into corners that the oil lamps never had, and the old stove was gone, replaced by some kind of heating system that he couldn’t see. There was new furniture, simple but functional, all more or less in the same places the old furniture had been. But what was truly amazing was that his books were all still there, neatly arranged on the shelves he remembered.

“Shion…you live here now?”

Shion gave a low, joyless laugh as he helped Nezumi down onto the bed. A bigger bed. A better bed, like everything here was better now. “No, I don’t live here. I stay, occasionally…” He began peeling off Nezumi’s scarf, and then his jacket, easing it over the bleeding wound. When he got down to his bloody t-shirt, he reached into a pack he’d been carrying, took out a pair of scissors and cut it off, carefully peeling away the bits where the blood had dried and stuck to the cut. 

Nezumi didn’t miss the way Shion’s lips pressed together, thin and white, when he saw the extent of it. “Knife wound. Deep,” he muttered to himself, and then he prodded Nezumi’s ribs. He was clearly trying to be gentle, but the pain was enough to make Nezumi cry out. Shion withdrew his hands, and looked into Nezumi’s eyes. He took the flashlight back, and shined it into them, and his frown deepened.

Nezumi looked up at him blearily. Yes, Shion’s face was older: thinner, though the rest of him had filled out. But his eyes were the same: deep violet and full of everything he was feeling, and he was feeling…god, could it be that even now, after everything, he was feeling…? “Shion…I…I came back…” he heard himself saying, as if someone else were speaking the words from very far away.

“I know, Nezumi,” Shion said, taking one of Nezumi’s hands in his own. And it was so warm, as warm as it had been so long ago, the first time Shion had found him battered and bleeding in a storm. But Shion’s face was white and drawn and anxious, and he was pulling something out of the pocket of his jacket – a jacket that Nezumi realized now was hi-tech, built to withstand the weather and perhaps more, with a medical cross on its sleeve. Shion held a phone, and he was pressing buttons and speaking into it, and then he was putting it away again. He looked down at Nezumi, smiling in a way that Nezumi instantly distrusted. Letting go of Nezumi’s hand, he began pulling more medical supplies out of the pack.

“No,” Nezumi said, the gray flickering further into his vision.

“No, what?” Shion asked, his voice patient as he began to swab something over the wound on Nezumi’s arm.

“No, I am not going to die, when I’ve only just got you back…” Wait, had he really said that? Had he meant to say it? Did it matter?

“Of course you aren’t going to die,” Shion told him, efficiently wrapping the wound, though Nezumi thought that he saw a tinge of desperation in those steady eyes. “Now hold on, I’m just going to give you an injection for the pain, and – ”

“No!” Nezumi cried, with as much strength as he could muster. “Nothing that will make me pass out.”

“Nezumi – ”

“No!”

“Okay,” Shion sighed. “But I’m going to give you antibiotics and…a few other things to keep you stable until we can get you to a hospital. And to counteract anything you might have caught from whoever attacked you.” Without waiting for a reply, he jabbed a needle into Nezumi’s arm, and then two others.

“Shion…” Nezumi said when he was finished, shutting his eyes again, and trying to draw enough breath against the pain. He shivered, and Shion began to pack something warm around him.

“Nezumi?”

“Do you mind that I came back?”

Shion choked on something between a laugh and a sob. “Do I _mind?_ Do you…” He stopped, dropping his head into his hands, and scrubbing them across his eyes before he looked at Nezumi again. “Do you understand what it means to me to see you again? Even like this?”

“You must hate me,” Nezumi said, his voice sounding even farther away.

“I don’t hate you. I _couldn’t_ hate you.”

“But by now…” Nezumi was fading, little making sense anymore, the darkness spreading even behind his closed eyes. “Someone else…” He shivered, his whole body convulsing with the cold he couldn’t seem to shake.

Somewhere, far away, there was a shuddering breath. And then Nezumi felt gentle hands pulling blankets up to his chin, tucking them carefully around him. “There’s no one else,” he said softly, one hand still resting on Nezumi’s shoulder. “There could never be anyone else.”

“Shion…please don’t leave me…”

“I’ll never leave you. Not as long as you want me to stay.” He felt Shion’s fingers reach up, brush the wet hair off of his face and then linger for a moment on his cheek. He wanted to say something, the right thing, the perfect thing; but before the words could form, everything dissolved into oblivion.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things look a little different to Nezumi when he wakes up in a hospital, with no clear memory of how he got there.

2

Nezumi woke in a room that was far too bright. He hurt, but it was nothing like as sharp as the pain he remembered…from when, exactly? And where? Everything was hazy, despite the strong light. Shit, he was medicated. Up to the eyeballs, if he was any judge. He tried to remember how he’d gotten here. He recalled his old room, his old bed, and the grinding pain of broken bones and torn tissue. He also remembered something that couldn’t have been – deep violet eyes, a white halo of hair, a hand on his cheek. A hand he’d once known well…

“Nezumi! You’re awake!” And all at once, there he was, standing in the doorway of Nezumi’s room – a hospital room, he now realized. Shion, his hair pulled neatly back into a ponytail, his violet eyes bright and cheeks flushed, above a professional shirt and tie and a long, white coat. A doctor’s coat. All of it came back to Nezumi then.

He tried to sit up, and then yelped at the pain in his side, and fell back against the pillows. Angry with himself, with all of it, he glared at Shion. “What am I doing here?” he demanded.

Shion shut the door, set the clipboard he’d been carrying down on a side table and then came to sit in the chair by Nezumi’s bed, sighing. “I have to admit, I’ve been wondering that myself.”

Nezumi looked at him, frowning, furious at Shion for the quiet patience in his eyes as he looked back, so clearly desperate for an explanation, but not demanding one. Looking away from Shion, and smiling humorlessly at the ceiling, Nezumi said, “Well, I promised, didn’t I?”

He could still feel Shion’s eyes on him, heavy as river stones, when the other man answered, “You did. I just never expected you to interpret ‘reunion’ quite so dramatically.”

Nezumi raised his eyebrows, still facing the ceiling. “Well, drama _has_ always been my forte.”

There was a long silence, and then Shion asked softly, “Why were you there, Nezumi? The West Block. Our old…”

He trailed off into silence, but by an instinct honed during the months when they’d been the core of each other’s lives, Nezumi knew that it was more than silence. He tore his eyes from the ceiling and looked at Shion. His head was bowed, his body perfectly still, but there was no mistaking the glimmer at the edges of his eyes. Tears. This was exactly what he had wanted to avoid, and so he had to wonder if being trapped here now, injured and drugged and unable to escape in the likely event that those tears spilled, was some kind of cosmic retribution.

He took a deep breath. “No. I never in a million years expected that that place would still be there. It was just…habit? Stupidity? I don’t know, whatever it was that made me come at the city from the direction of the West Block in the first place. It was so quiet, I let my guard down. I got jumped. Then, the only place I could think to go was – ” _Our old place_ was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t make himself say the words. “ – the bunker.”

“You know, the chances of me finding you there…of _anyone_ finding you…” Shion shook his head. “We almost didn’t patrol that area that night. We usually wait until the weather’s been bad for a while. You were lucky.”

_Or cursed._ “And you, it seems, were spectacularly unlucky – again.”

“What do you mean?” Shion asked, guileless as he’d been as a teenager. It almost coaxed a genuine smile from Nezumi, but he stopped it in time, seeing Shion’s eyes poised on the brink of hurt.

“Well, here you are, once again blessed with the honor of dragging my sorry ass in out of a storm and patching me up.”

Shion laughed a bit. “You didn’t make it easy, this time,” he said. “That knife cut was deep, you have a grade two ACL sprain, plus internal bleeding, since two of your ribs were broken straight through, and they’d punctured – ”

Nezumi shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “While I’m glad to see that time hasn’t diminished your aptitude for verbal diarrhea, could you please spare me the details?”

“All right,” Shion said, and when Nezumi looked back at him, he at least looked less ready to fall apart. “What _do_ you want to know?”

Nezumi sighed. “You’re a doctor now?”

Shion nodded, half-smiling. “You told me to rebuild. And I did do that, for a while. At least, I helped. But city planning, committee meetings, endless blueprints…to be honest, I hated it. I started training in medicine about a year after you left.” There was the slightest falter in his voice as he said this, but then he gathered himself and resumed. “I’m still not fully qualified. Just a junior doctor, on the surgery track. But I’m almost there. And…you?”

The question was tentative, as if Shion feared that asking it would make Nezumi angry. For a moment, he couldn’t make himself answer. But that was hardly fair. Shion had saved his life, again, no questions asked: even after everything that Nezumi had done to hurt him. 

“I’ve traveled,” he said after a moment. “I’ve acted, to support myself. Never stayed anywhere very long. Nothing new, really.”

There was another long pause, but this time Nezumi made himself meet Shion’s gaze for the question he knew was coming. “So why did you come back?” he asked softly, gently.

But Nezumi didn’t want to be treated gently by Shion. That was the last thing he’d wanted, coming back here, and now he had to answer this worst of questions, looking him in the eye. 

“I told you – I promised.”

Shion’s eyes were steady on him, but there was something tremulous in the depths of them that had panic unfurling in Nezumi’s chest. “Fine. But why now? Nezumi – what did you want, coming back here?”

Nezumi considered the question for a long moment. If he was honest – and what else could he be, now, stranded under Shion’s intent gaze? – he couldn’t even answer the first question for himself. And so he said, “I don’t really know. I guess…I guess it had just been long enough.” Shion watched him, obviously waiting for him to answer the second question. “What did I want?” He sighed, hearing his Gran admonish him for it even as the breath left his body. “I wanted proof that you’d forgotten me.”

That was what did it: without a word, without even a hitch of breath, tears were rolling down Shion’s cheeks. He didn’t reach to wipe them away, and he didn’t reach for Nezumi. He didn’t open his mouth to speak a word of retribution. But there was devastation in his darkened eyes that went beyond anything he could have said. 

And maybe because he’d already made Shion cry, or maybe because there was some cruel part of him that still couldn’t bear the pure brightness of this man he’d once loved more than he could ever admit, Nezumi told him bluntly: “I didn’t plan to see you. Or, I mean, I didn’t plan for _you_ to see _me._ I meant to come here, make sure that you’d moved on, and then leave again.”

For a moment Shion remained frozen, tears still rolling down his cheeks. And then he stood up, and leaned over Nezumi, hands on either side of his head, still so careful, although his face was furious. Nezumi’s eyes widened despite himself. This was the Shion who had coldly shot a wounded man in the head, after extracting every bit of information from him that he could. This was also the Shion who had turned that same gun on himself, and very nearly pulled the trigger. Someone stronger and more dangerous, and also infinitely more fragile, than he could comprehend. 

“You thought that I would have _forgotten_ you?” Shion hissed, his cheeks and eyes blazing. “You didn’t even plan to speak to me? You meant to leave without telling me you’d ever come?”

“I – I thought you’d be – ” 

“You fucking bastard!”

Nezumi stared up, stunned beyond speech, at Shion’s face, a twist of grief and rage. 

“Guess what, Nezumi?” he said bitterly. “I haven’t forgotten you. There hasn’t been a single day in seven years when I haven’t thought about you… _worried_ about you. Wondered if you were happy, or hurt, or dead! And as for ‘moving on,’” he laughed, a terrible, hollow, sound. “Oh, I tried. Which is to say that I’m not the virgin you left behind. But a year or two of that was more than enough, because I don’t think there’s anything worse in this world than fucking one person and seeing someone else’s face. So – ” 

Shion stood up, wiping his tears at last, though he was still breathing hard, and his eyes were still dark and tumultuous, “ – here you go, Nezumi.” He held out his arms. “Here’s what you came to see, or prove to yourself, or whatever. I have a job – a calling, if you want to be so specific. I fill my days. I go home to an empty apartment. Just like I told you two nights ago – when, all right, you were probably more than half delirious with pain – there is no one else. There has never been anyone else. I don’t hate my life. I don’t love my life. Most nights, I still dream about you, and a good half of them are nightmares. Does that answer your questions?”

“Shion…” Nezumi said, barely above a whisper, hating himself more than he had in a very long time. “You know that’s not what I meant…”

Shion smiled ironically. “Well then, take some time to consider what you meant. Because you’re going to be here for a while, and you have exactly one friend left here now…if you’ll still condescend to call me that.”

“Shion!” Nezumi cried, as best he could, but Shion had already picked up his clipboard and stormed out the door.

Nezumi wanted to run after him, to beg him for forgiveness. Instead, he could only lie in the ringing silence and consider the fact that of all of the idiotic things he’d done since he’d returned to No. 6, telling Shion the things he’d just told him had very likely been the stupidest of all. 

*

It was a full day before Shion came back; a day during which Nezumi slipped in and out of drugged consciousness, and various, efficient nurses came in to prod bandages and adjust I.V. bags and help him to the bathroom and try to make him eat horrifically bland food. A day in which he played every single word he’d exchanged with Shion since he met him in the West Block over and over again. 

Near evening of the day after Shion stormed out, Nezumi finally asked one of the nurses, “How long am I going to be here?”

The nurse, who looked barely older than a high school girl, said, “Until you can walk out of here on your own.” She considered this, as she opened the valve on a new I.V. bag. “Or until you have someone to take care of you at home.”

Why those words, of all of the ones spoken since he’d returned to No. 6, should have been the ones to break him, he didn’t know. But all at once, Nezumi felt tears begin to leak out of his eyes. He didn’t sob; he made no more sound than Shion had when he’d cried the day before. And yet he couldn’t stop the flood of hot moisture running down his cheeks. He covered his eyes with his hands in mortification, not caring about the stab of pain in his arm and his ribs as he did so. 

He was so absorbed in the pain and embarrassment that it was almost a shock when the nurse laid a soft hand oh his forehead, smoothing the hair away from his eyes, and said, “It’s all right. You don’t have to be ashamed. You’ve been hurt badly, and some of the medication you’re on can make you emotional.”

Nezumi nodded, unable to speak.

“I can call the doctor, if you like?”

Again Nezumi nodded, before he could really think the question through. Or maybe he’d thought it through as much as he needed to – yes, he wanted to see Shion. He didn’t think that he could bear another moment of not seeing him, after the way he’d left yesterday. It was only after the nurse had gone that Nezumi wondered if he had more than one doctor – or if Shion was even officially his doctor at all. But there was no way to call her back, at least that he knew of, and so he could only wait until he heard footsteps outside the door. And then, the door opening.

Shion didn’t hold a clipboard this time. He didn’t hold anything, although his eyes were guarded as he closed the door softly and leaned against it. “You asked for me?”

And once again, tears were slipping out of Nezumi’s eyes. He tried to swipe at them, but moving his arms hurt too much. Instead he shut his eyes, as he heard Shion moving toward him, and then felt a hand wiping the tears away for him. 

“Nezumi…I’m sorry.”

_“You’re_ sorry?” Nezumi laughed bitterly through the still-flowing tears.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Shion said, sitting down carefully on the edge of the bed, on the opposite side from Nezumi’s broken ribs. “To say the things I said to you, when you’re in this state, was unforgivable. That’s why I haven’t been back. I overstepped – ”

“Shion, shut up,” Nezumi said, shaking his head.

“What?” Shion asked, and Nezumi, feeling him draw back, fumbled for his hand. Tentatively, Shion’s fingers closed around his.

_“I’m_ the one who should be apologizing,” Nezumi said, holding Shion’s fingers as tightly as he could. “You talk about unforgivable? What I did to you all those years ago… _that_ was unforgivable. Not just leaving you, but all of it. Shaming you for being what you were. Dragging you into that hellhole when it was never about saving your friend, at least for me – ”

“Nezumi, maybe we shouldn’t – ”

“Shouldn’t we?” Nezumi looked up into Shion’s eyes, wide and worried. “I’m here. I know from your nurse that I’m going to be here for a while. Maybe…maybe all of this was…”

“Yes, Nezumi?” Shion asked, a crease forming between his eyes as he clearly braced for one more rejection.

“Maybe we had to talk.”

The crease smoothed a bit, but his eyes were still guarded. “Which is to say, you have something to tell me?”

“I…I…lied.”

Shion’s hand twitched in Nezumi’s. “You lied about what?”

“Wanting to see you happy. I didn’t.”

“That’s – ”

“Cruel? Insane? Just plain shitty?”

“I – well – no. Actually, I’m…glad.”

“Glad that I didn’t want you to be happy?” Nezumi laughed, with a tinge of hysteria.

Shion took a deep breath, looking down at their clasped hands, and then he said, “Nezumi, did you really want to find me happy, with someone else?”

Nezumi stopped himself from laughing; it hurt too much. “This may be the meds talking, but no.”

“So…does that mean that _you_ aren’t attached?”

Nezumi let out a wheezing sigh. “Do you even have to ask?”

Shion looked down at him, and Nezumi met his eyes. “And does that mean,” Shion said softly, “that you won’t mind if I do this?” Tentatively, he leaned down, until his lips met Nezumi’s. For a moment, it was the chaste kiss they had first shared. Then Shion parted his lips, and Nezumi reciprocated, and they were back in that last kiss, where they’d briefly tasted each other. Nezumi opened his eyes, and met Shion’s violet ones, looking back at him. For a moment time suspended, and then Shion closed his eyes again, and his tongue slid into Nezumi’s mouth, coiling with his in a dance they’d put off for far too long. Nezumi reached up into his hair, his fingers weaving into it, until pain stopped him and he drew them back.

Shion kissed him for a moment longer, and then he pulled away, a slight smile on his lips. “Okay, I think that’s just about enough for you, right now.”

“No! Shion!”

Shion looked down at Nezumi with undeniable affection. “You have a lot of healing to do. And we have a lot of talking to do. But I think that you’ll agree that you getting stuck here might just be a good thing?”

“It…might not be a bad thing?” Nezumi answered, with a half-smile.

Shion ran a hand through Nezumi’s hair, and then said, “Rest, now.” He began to walk away, but Nezumi reached out and grabbed the back of his jacket. Shion stopped, and turned around. “Do you need something?”

“Yes,” Nezumi said. “You.”

“Nezumi…I have rounds…”

“I don’t care. I need you.”

Shion looked down at him, puzzled. “You need me for…what, exactly?”

“Lie down with me, Shion. Like we used to.”

“Nezumi, I can’t – ”

“Please.” Nezumi didn’t think any word had ever been harder for him to say.

Shion’s eyes softened. There may have been a glimmer of tears in them again. “Okay. For a little while. Only I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Could you ever hurt me worse than I hurt you?” Nezumi whispered, as he shuffled over on the small bed to make room for Shion. 

Shion took off his shoes, his jacket, loosened his tie. Slowly, carefully, he lay down beside Nezumi. For a moment he held himself stiffly, clearly afraid of hurting him. But slowly, gradually, he relaxed, and Nezumi relaxed into the curve of his body. Tentatively, Shion began to stroke Nezumi’s hair. Nezumi gave a little hum of pleasure, and Shion leaned in to kiss the back of his neck, and then nuzzled against it.

“I don’t know,” Shion said after many moments when they just breathed together. “But I won’t. I never will.” He paused, and then he whispered, “Stay? Stay with me?”

Nezumi reached for Shion’s hands, drew his arms around him, despite the pain. “If you’ll have me…then yes. Forever.” 

And home suddenly didn’t seem that far away at all.


End file.
